Among The Rubble
by Miste
Summary: Remus sifts through rubble. Quite sad. OotP spoilers. One-Shot.


I smile. It's time. I fulfilled my promise to him, my old friend. Harry is alive and Voldemort is dead. Lots of other people are dead too, and Harry might wish he were as well, but I didn't promise about them. I didn't promise he would be happy. He isn't. Many are dead. God, poor Molly. She knew. That boggart in the drawing room was her fear but she knew, as I did, that a lot of those would come true. It's funny. The only one we didn't see was the one that didn't happen. Her baby daughter is still there. Ginny Weasley is alive. I wish that she wasn't . She pulled a Peter on us. We thought she was so good, so kind, so wonderful, and we all trusted her. I think Harry loved her. That was what scarred him the most.  
  
Ah, here is the site. I will have to dig a lot.  
  
That was a terrible sight. Pretty, sweet Ginny, her face contorted with hatred, trying to kill Albus Dumbledore. Ah, I'm getting off track. Anyways, It's time for me to die. I have wanted to ever since Bellatrix hit Sirius with that spell. The last of us. When he died, I died with him again. I have died many times. First when I learned James, Lily, and Peter were dead. Then when I was told that that was because of Sirius. Then when he died. Then when I learned he was wrong about who had died.  
  
God, how much stone will I have to go through before I find it?  
  
Never trust a red-headed woman. She was standing with Ginny. No, seeing Ginny try to kill Albus wasn't what killed Harry inside. Lily Potter helping her finally did him in. Peter was a traitor, no mistake. She was, too. It was James who died to save Harry. Whatever he did to Severus to let off O.W.L. steam, he died to save his son. Oh, yes. Speaking of that, I am the only one alive who was under that beech tree. Voldemort found out about Snape. His body was one of the worst things I have seen in my life. I won't go into that right now. Snape was the one that told us his pretended master knew about the link between him and Harry earlier than we thought. Enough to plant fake memories in Harry's head for the boggarts.  
  
Must sift through more rubble so I can die at last.  
  
Fred and George saved us. Albus was wistfully mentioning a diversion. Fred and George were in the grieving for an older and a younger brother, but they spoke up. They told us they could divert anyone. They were right. When Voldemort's troops marched toward us, one stepped on a certain patch of ground. A swamp with stinksap and garroting gas wiped out two-thirds of their number. Then the twins took out a dozen apiece before making one last diversion.  
  
It's so dusty, I need my handkerchief.  
  
Two wizards were attempting the killing curse on Harry. The twins looked at each other and jumped in front of the wands, absorbing the green lights. They wanted to go.  
  
Good God, how long will it take to get there?  
  
Molly lost everyone. One of her sons thought she was an idiot, and four died. The other lost his mind. Her sweet little daughter was a traitor. What else did she have? Her husband, it's true.  
  
I see ancient crumbling stone and my heart leaps. No, just a doorway. Square, not even arched.  
  
Where was I? Oh, yes. Arthur Weasley. He is in a wheelchair. In a way, its [it's] good. Molly is so obsessed with helping him, she tries to block out the deaths and madness and betrayal of her seven children. Actually more like eight. She counts Harry as her son, after all. Harry is not exactly mad, it's just that he won't speak or respond to anyone. He just goes about his business looking for arches. The building that housed the ministry was completely destroyed,so he thinks everything in it was destroyed, too. I know better . . .  
  
Pieces of stone with peeling yet still moving golden paint...  
  
Ron was attacked by a brain a few floors below here, if I'm in the rubble from the atrium. I think I am. Madam Pomfrey was right. Thoughts do leave deeper scars. He had all these memories that wern't his own. Memories from a man five times his age. Nobody knew until a few years after my oldest friend died that Aurors take the bodies back to the ministry. Well, some did but nobody knew there was experimentation. It's funny. Of all the brains in the tank, it was the one that would affect him most that grabbed him. His own grandfather's. He saw himself as a child through the old man's eyes. He didn't know until then how much contempt his grandfather held him in.  
  
I've been digging for hours.  
  
It's been a decade. A decade to the day since Harry first went to the department. A decade to the day since Padfoot died. I think about him, you know. I think about him every day and every night. The transformations have been terrible. No one is there. No one curls up with Moony, no one cares. We are all too wrapped up within ourselves to reach out, make contact, even for a second. Snape died when Harry was a year out of Hogwarts. I am amazed he lasted that long.  
  
I can feel every muscle crying out but it doesn't matter. That shan't last long.  
  
I think the Malfoys killed him. Well, Lucius and Draco, at least. They are both dead, too, though. Harry killed Draco and I killed Lucius. I killed a lot of people, actually. I think I killed the most. Everyone else tried to capture rather than kill. Not me. Maybe I thought I might as well rid the world of them since I could never feel worse than I do already. I was right. I will say this, though. I only killed if they attacked first. If I attacked first, I captured. That's my own code of ethics. James had a similar one. If I see him when I get there, I hope beyond all hope he died before knowing Lily was a traitor. I hope beyond all hope he will forgive me for killing the woman he loved with all his heart and soul.  
  
Another floor down. The stone is black now. I see the traces of a black candelabra.  
  
Luna Lovegood was a great help. She came back from her trip looking for Crumple-Horned Snorkacks around four years after the day she was expected back. She had changed a lot. I didn't recognize her until I saw the wand slide past haunted eyes and come to rest on an ear for safekeeping. She doesn't talk much unless it's an incantation and even that is becoming rarer. She has retreated into the highest tower of Hogwarts and devoted her life to potion-making.  
  
A step. A simple, unharmed stone step. I'm here.  
  
I dig down and down as I follow the rubble of a hundred steps. I reach a stone floor at last and then use a spell to blast a lot of rubble away. It's still there, unaffected by any spell, especially not my own feeble blasting one. I pick up a length of metal and use it to draw the curtain away. He is there. There. Whole, healthy and There. I start to run but he raises a hand to stop me.  
  
"Wait, Remus. Please." His voice is just like it was in school.  
  
"There is something you need to do. Will you?" I nod.  
  
"Good. First, you need to use powerful blasting spells until you come to something that cant be blasted and is made of black rock with threads of silver and of gold. You need to blast it with a happiness charm. Can you?" I nod again. Words are beyond me.  
  
"Then, and most importantly." His voice changes. He forces the next words out with obvious pain.  
  
"Arch....good....veil...evil...don't...come......." He gasped and sweated and started puking violently.  
  
I turn and blast rubble. The cube big enough for me to stand in is just as he described it. I summon a patronus with the thought of going through the veil to see my friend whom I love as a brother. The stone glows brightly then shatters. A powerful emotion hits me and from far away I hear violin music and laughter and the peaceful silence that comes with being with your soulmate. I turn and walk through the arch.  
  
Sirius shrivels to nothing and my world is full of demonic laughter. 


End file.
